Shackleton’s sensitivity to the needs of his men was legendary. “So great was his care of his people,” his associate Frank Worsley wrote, “that, to rough men, it seemed at times to have a touch of the woman about it, even to the verge of fussiness.” But Shackleton was also capable of insisting on a Bligh-like discipline. On an earlier expedition, when one of the men felt his freedoms were being infringed upon, Shackleton quelled the insurrection by knocking the man to the ground. This combination of decisive, authoritative action and an ability to empathize with others is rarely found in a
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